476 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



a great age. The older birds are about as tough and unfit for 

 food as an old horse. Only the younger are savory, and the 

 gunners might well have spared the adult birds, but it was 

 " sport " to kill them and fashion called for swan's-down. 

 The large size of this bird and its conspicuousness have served, 

 as in the case of the Whooping Crane, to make it a shining 

 mark, and the trumpetings that were once heard over the 

 breadth of a great continent, as the long converging lines 

 drove on from zone to zone, will soon be heard no more. In 

 the ages to come, like the call of the Whooping Crane, they 

 will be locked in the silence of the past. 



At the approach of the frost king, the Trumpeter leaves its 

 breeding grounds in the northwest and moves southward in 

 triangular flock formation. The flocks move on like those of 

 the Canada Goose, led by some old male, who, when tired of 

 breasting the full force of the air currents, calls for relief, and 

 falls back into the ranks, giving way to another. In migra- 

 tion they fly at such immense heights that often the human 

 eye fails to find them, but even then their resonant, discordant 

 trumpetings can be plainly heard. When seen with a glass at 

 that giddy height in the heavens, crossing the sky in their 

 exalted and unswerving flight, sweeping along at a speed 

 exceeding that of the fastest express train, traversing a conti- 

 nent on the wings of the wind, their long lines glistening like 

 silver in the bright sunlight, they present the grandest and 

 most impressive spectacle in bird life to be found on this con- 

 tinent. When at last they find their haven of rest they swing 

 in wide, majestic circuits, spying out their landfall, until, their 

 spiral reconnoissance ended and their apprehensions quite 

 allayed, they sail gently down to the grateful waters, to rest, 

 drink, bathe and feed at ease. 



Fifty years ago in the far west great flocks of these birds, a 

 quarter of a mile in length, were seen massed like blankets of 

 snow on the river banks. On the water they move lightly 

 and gracefully. Their long necks and great size, taken in 

 connection with the mirage effects, sometimes seen in their 

 haunts, deceive the eye, until in the distance they present the 

 appearance of a fleet of ships under sail. 



